Power of the Zila

Mary Harpers' odyssey brings into dramatic focus; the joy, mystery and terror of the people at the foot of the Thabazimbi Mountain of South-Africa. In the Zila connection: a spiritual and physical journey, First-wife FYI an university graduate and a woman of substance, invites Mary Harper of Ireland to visit the bountiful Ehlanzeni of South Africa, and give a series of lectures to the Bushveld women, on the Power of the Torc the doctrine of their ethnic morality. In the shadow of Thabazimbi Mary Harper literally falls into a cryptic web spun by old Madoda Tyi, the mouth piece of the Mountain; and Ramses Mamba, a handsome rogue of mixed blood and many faces; whose destiny leads him along warpaths of Chaka-Zulu to the white bedrooms of Sandfontein. Bettie Fourie, the matriarch of Sandfontein, with Celtic connections not only held the key to the Irish woman's past, but also plots and schemes to keep Mary Harper on the farm where her son Frans Fourie, a rich Bushveld farmer, and a dynamic man of his time finds himself trapped in a web of malicious gossip. In search of her identity, Mary Harper finds herself entangled in the lives of the people, and ghosts of the Batagati when unexpectedly Thabazimbi, the prehistoric Mountain illuminates the darkest corner of her mind, stripping her naked in the mirror of her immortality. With a life orchestrated by forces beyond her control, a vicious bush tempest forces her to return to Ireland, only to discover she is with child. Five years later a letter arrives, bearing the stamp of her past summoning her return to South Africa. Knowing destiny is a two edged sword, and would only come to rest at the marrow of time, she returns to the Bushveld with the heir of Sandfontein.